Sara Yama Festival and Some Newbies

May 28th and 29th was the Sara Yama Festival which is a small festival held by the town of Saza. There's various booths selling things, lots of food and events for kids. Every year the the studio has a booth selling pieces we've made and a booth for kids and adults to paint their own plate (for free!)







Here is the booth selling various things students have made. There were hundres of different things from cups to plates to figurines to necklaces with clay beads. Sadly I didn't put anything to sell this year since I didn't have anything worth selling.

It was rainy all weekend as well so the amount of people was pretty low, which is not good for sales. If you're lucky you can make 1000yen but usually its nothing. It's just fun to see if anyone buys something you've made.
Here is the paint your own plate booth. Mostly kids do it but we had a few parents and adults paint their own plate as well.






The constant drizzle kept all of us under the tent so it was quite crowded!






Anyways, since my large vase is drying I'm back to making regular things. Here I made 6 cups and plates, mix of red stone and black stone clay. Very gritty, but the stones look great after firing.















Here are three of them after carving. Because the clay is so gritty it is hard to make them thin and light but I did pretty well this time, except one cup which I will do over sometime.





Another plate, turned out well.







One handled coffee/tea cup







Underside of the two







Since I'm leaving in two months I'm getting a head start on going away presents, it's been awhile since I've been on the wheel this much so I'm getting used to it again. I have tons of clay (Almost 60kg worth!) to get through so I'll make some table vases this coming week to try to eat through the clay faster.

Until next time!